It is often said that a writer’s inspiration can come from anywhere, but 75 years ago the muse was to be found falling from the bomb bays of an armada of American bombers. What is perhaps even more unusual is that such an occurrence was also the wellspring for both an inspired defence of Catholic monastic life and a classic work of literary science fiction.
Walter M Miller had a somewhat unique perspective on monastic life, gained as it was from the rear gun turret of a B-25 on a bright February morning in 1944.
Miller’s squadron was one of those tasked with the bombing of the fortress-like abbey atop Monte Cassino, in support of the Allied advance on Rome. As his aircraft turned for home he had a sufficient interval in which to observe the boiling clouds of dust and smoke that was all that remained of a monastic presence first established by St Benedict more than 14 centuries earlier. It was a sight that would never leave him and one that, 16 years later, would prove to be the catalyst for a remarkable literary achievement.
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) is an enigmatic tale of 2,000 years of monastic life. By the time of Miller’s death, in 1996, the book had sold more than two million copies and it has never been out of print. Yet despite the vocation of Miller’s leading characters, the novel is not a historical retelling of the lives of Augustine, Columba or Patrick. It is rather a work of post-apocalyptic science fiction, considered to be not just the finest example of its genre but a literary masterpiece in its own right.
In Miller’s imagined world, the nuclear apocalypse (the “fire deluge”) takes place in the latter half of the 20th century. In its wake the benighted survivors launch a crazed millenarian effort to purge humanity of its sinful possession of knowledge. Subsequently, the collected wisdom of mankind, together with its practitioners, is put to the torch and within a few generations illiteracy becomes almost universal. Yet even amid the chaos of “the simplification”, books were secretly preserved by a number of Catholic monastic orders in the remoter parts of America.
The novel opens in the 26th century, 600 years after the world had entered its new Dark Age, and follows generations of brothers in the “Albertian Order of Saint Leibowitz” in their struggle to preserve and understand the knowledge of the past, then to propagate it, and finally to adapt to a world where mankind’s scientific and technical achievements have finally eclipsed those of their long-dead forefathers.
Miller’s choice of the monasteries as a possible future safe haven for knowledge was a shrewd one. The monks he so lovingly brings to life are of course echoes of the thousands of largely nameless brothers who, in their scriptoriums and libraries, kept alive the wisdom of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the words of Vitruvius and Tacitus, through the Dark Ages. In Miller’s world the monasteries have once again become lonely lighthouses of knowledge amid a dark sea of ignorance.
After the war Miller studied engineering at the University of Texas and during this period he converted to Catholicism. It wasn’t until the 1950s that his first stories began to be published. But once he got his break his output became prodigious and in 1955 he won his first Hugo Award.
The lessons Miller learned in the tough, competitive world of the sci-fi pulp magazines are evident in this his only full length novel. Although the book is epic in its scope the elegantly pared down prose prevents it from becoming flabby. While its themes have been much debated, both the settings and the underlying philosophies it explores repeatedly challenge the reader in wholly unexpected ways, and its exploration of the cyclical view of history seems to owe as much to Hegel as it does to Augustine or Aquinas.
The book was certainly a challenge to Miller, who struggled with depression in the years after the war. The writer Joe Haldeman said of him that he “had post-traumatic stress disorder for 30 years before it had a name”. This was something Miller himself seemed to acknowledge: “I was writing the first version of the scene where Zerchi lies half buried in the rubble. Then a light bulb came on over my head: ‘Good God, is this the abbey at Monte Cassino? What have I been writing?’ ”
Sadly Miller took his own life in 1996. But in writing A Canticle for Leibowitz, he left a literary legacy which, with its subtle grace and beauty, continues to intrigue and delight readers in equal measure.
Alfred Searls writes about books, music and architecture for the online magazine Northern Soul (northernsoul.me.uk)
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